Dukore, whose first book, A Novel Called Heritage , won the Maxwell Perkins Prize, seems to specialize in humorous first-person narratives about troubled women. Here, heroine Lola Bloom is a 33-year-old whose sense of irony is far better developed than her sense of self. Having lived in the shadow of her Hollywood producer grandfather, syndicated cartoonist husband, and television star sister, she yearns to be ``somebody. Lola is frantically hedonistic and obviously disturbed in the first chaptersdrunkenly pouring detergent into a fountain on Waikiki Beach, and the like. After a suicide attempt (and Dukore makes even this amusing), she leaves her husband, begins analysis, and starts a search for autonomy that takes her to Hollywood, through the world s most menial and boring job, into a surrogate pregnancy, and back to the man she loves. A lively, bawdy treatment of a serious subjectwith a happy ending. Highly recommended light reading. Joyce Smothers, Ocean Cty. Lib., Toms River,